Tuesday 19 March 2024

Warp Drive And Extra-Solar Colonization

Question And Answer.

Poul Anderson addresses sf ideas from every angle. In this novel:

the faster than light warp drive covers any interstellar distance in almost the same time so that distant stars are as easy to reach as nearer ones;

extra-solar planets are not easily colonized because the human race is entirely dependent on the precise set of conditions in the Terrestrial environment.

Is such a warp drive possible? A question for theoretical physicists. 

Will extra-solar planets be difficult or impossible to colonize? I think that this is highly probable. In any case, such colonization would not do much to relieve population pressure on Earth - if indeed there continues to be such population pressure. All the assumptions and sf premises are up for grabs.

Anderson's ultimate speculative novel was Genesis in which only post-organic intelligences cross interstellar space and only at sub-light speeds.

Sanity

Poul Anderson, Question And Answer (New York, 1978), CHAPTER II.

Can a brilliant scientist and mathematician also be a religious fanatic? Yes. People are complicated. Their beliefs can be contradictory. Few learn to think. Others think only superficially. 

"The rest is still conditioned reflex and rationalization of a thousand subconscious fears and hates and longings." (p. 13)

This is the "protean enemy" of Anderson's Psychotechnic History. In Question And Answer, as in that future history series, a science of man is being developed. It will become possible to raise new generations to be "'...truly sane...'" (ibid.) but this will take time because historical insanity remains built into the structure of society.

The problem in the novel will become: who will apply this new science and to what ends? Can the insane make themselves sane? (As I always think: we cannot make a bed while we are lying on it; we get in our own way.)

Monday 18 March 2024

Unique?

Dune is praised in such extravagant terms that I think that a comparison with Poul Anderson is valid. 

"DUNE is the finest, most widely acclaimed science fiction novel of this century. Huge in scope, towering in concept, it is a work that will live in the reader's imagination for the rest of his life."
-back cover blurb on Frank Herbert, Dune (London, 1974).

"DUNE seems to me unique among SF novels in the depth of its characterization and the extraordinary detail of the world it creates. I know nothing comparable to it except THE LORD OF THE RINGS."
-Arthur C. Clarke, quoted on the back cover of Dune (see above).

Dune might be the "most widely acclaimed" sf novel but I think that every other statement above is way over the top.

At SciCon '70 in London, Guest of Honour James Blish and his wife, Judy, wore Muslim and Hindu garb for the Fancy Dress event. When Brian Aldiss (I think) asked Blish about this "mixed marriage," Blish replied, "What I represent is Frank Herbert trying to work out what he is doing." When I asked Blish about this, he pointed to a difference between the settings of Arrakis and Giedi Prime although, since these are two different planets, maybe that is ok? But I think that Blish's point was that, instead of being shown a coherent interstellar civilization, we are just seeing discordant settings that are really from different parts of Earth's past.

But I think that there are valid points to be made about incoherence in Dune. Herbert ignores the rule - or at least the soundly based literary convention - that any continuous narrative passage should be narrated from a single point of view. When two or three characters converse, Herbert's text jumps back and forth between each of their viewpoints. 

Whereas Poul Anderson sympathetically presents the viewpoints of religious believers, in Dune religion seems to be merely a cynical instrument of social control and also involves unexplained syncretistic terminology: Zensunni; Buddislamic; Orange Catholic. We expect substance but get only these labels.

Scenery on the planet Caladan
Castle Caladan is "...the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations..." (Dune, BOOK ONE, p. 9)

"Jessica crossed to the window, flung wide the draperies, stared across the river orchards towards Mount Syubi." (p. 11)

"Windows on each side of her overlooked the curving southern bend of the river and the green farmlands of the Atreides family holding..." (p. 12)

"She saw and yet did not see the evening's banked colours across the meadow and river." (pp. 26-27)

These are stage settings in no way comparable to the detailed descriptions regularly given by Poul Anderson.

Mentats
Computers have been banned. Human beings called Mentats have been specially trained to perform some computational functions. One Mentat says of the ancient thinking machines:

"'They were toys compared to me,' Piter snarled. 'You yourself, Baron, could outperform those machines.'" (p. 23)

Surely Piter's claims are absurd, particularly the one about the Baron?

Here's the deal. I will see how far I can get with rereading Dune. Inspired by films and hype, I am giving it a chance. This might result in further blog posts.

A Philosophy For The Terran Empire

If I lived in Poul Anderson's Terran Empire and was asked to philosophise about it, what might I say?

Seven Theses For The Empire
(i) Everything that exists is both interconnected and changing.
(Expressed negatively: nothing is isolated or static.)

(ii) Even when powerful forces resist change, no set of social relationships can remain unchanged indefinitely while everything else changes around it. 

(iii) Delayed change seems sudden but is the culmination of many unnoticed changes.

(iv) Imperial rule is a temporary set of changing relationships.

(v) Every civilized planet must be strengthened in preparation for the eventual withdrawal of Imperial protection.

(vi) Civilizations built in diverse environments and interacting with different intelligent species will be neither uniform nor predictable.

(vii) Each civilization needs to approach a collective self-understanding with the help of planetary social philosophers.

Emperors In DUNE And The Technic History

 

A spectacular film has an undeniable visual impact at least. Having seen Dune, Part 2, will I reread Dune? Will I compare and contrast it with Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization? Will that draw disagreement from defenders of Frank Herbert's works? A major theme of this blog is that anything that can be found in Foundation, Dune, the Future History, Star Trek or Star Wars can be found better in the Technic History.

One obvious comparison is that both series have not only an interstellar Empire but also an individual Emperor. In Dune, Part 2, Paul Atreides confronts and subordinates the Emperor. What does Poul Anderson give us? First, a history with the Terran Empire beginning, developing through at least two discrete stages and eventually ending. In addition, there are several different characters:

(i) the Founder of the Empire in "The Star Plunderer."

(ii) In Ensign Flandry, Emperor Georgios' birthday. Georgios does not appear in the novel but a film could cameo him during the birthday celebrations in the opening scenes.

(iii) Also in Ensign Flandry, Crown Prince Josip, the future Emperor, receives guests at the Coral Palace.

(iv) In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, Crown Prince Dietrich, a future Emperor, receives while his younger brother, Gerhart, another future Emperor, gets imperially drunk with cronies. Later, Emperor Hans, the first of the Emperors to appear while Emperor, confers with Dominic Flandry.

(v) In A Stone In Heaven, Emperor Gerhart confers with Edwin Cairncross.

That is all but it is a lot, considering the biographies and impacts of these individuals.

Sunday 17 March 2024

Question And Answer, Chapter I

Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, Chapter 1, begins with Ecclesiastes, ix, 12. 

Anderson's Question And Answer (New York, 1978) begins with Ecclesiastes, ix. 16-18, which we discussed here.

The alternative title, Planet Of No Return, identified the latter novel as sf whereas Question And Answer is genre-neutral. An opening Biblical quotation does not identify genre so how soon in the text do we realize that we are reading sf? The novel is copyright 1956. The opening sentence refers to "...a robot..." (CHAPTER I, p. 1). When alarm lights flash red and a siren hoots:

"Three of the techs dropped what they were doing and shoved for a purchase against the nearest wall." (ibid.)

They shove for purchase because they are in free-fall. They are in space which, in 1956, was sf. The techs flee from gamma radiation which alone is enough to locate the narrative in a science-based context. We all remember phrases from books that we have read in the past. In the 1960s, I read an sf paperback, title and author's name long since forgotten, that began by informing us that its protagonist's hair was receding so fast that you would think that his nose was radioactive. This amusing opening immediately established a scientifically oriented setting. In Question And Answer, CHAPTER I, the viewpoint character, named Kemmel Gummus-lugil, must cope with the radiation threat after the techs have fled. We do not yet know much else about the background.

Many Details

I have just, not for the first time, reread and blogged about Poul Anderson's After Doomsday. Surprisingly, such a short book carries a great deal of content. I have posted about those details that came to my attention on this occasion. However, searching the blog reveals many other such details, e.g., 

Monwaingi Societies

The Quotations In After Doomsday

After Doomsday: Some Details.

Next to be reread is Question And Answer, also known as Planet Of No Return, yet another one-off novel of faster than light interstellar travel and alien contact. I remember very little about it.

Three Years

After Doomsday.

The text is very condensed. Three years pass between two chapters. In that time, human beings have led their allies to victory in the war against Kandemir. Grateful freed beings have let Donnan make his base on their planet. There has been time for the "The Battle of Brandobar" ballad to be composed and to be sung in another civilization-cluster where it is heard by the women of Terran Traders. 

Several TV series could be set in those three years (a "three year mission"):

the War against Kamdemir
Terran Traders
Songs sung and tales told in Yotl's Nest
What happened to the Russian ship
What happened to the Chinese ship with its sexually mixed crew
the British Commonwealth ship
Other human ships

Very like the way Star Trek developed.

Saturday 16 March 2024

Loud In The Trees

After Doomsday.

A song sung by a spaceman in Yotl's Nest tells the women of Terran Traders that other human beings are alive. Sigrid says that there can only be two such days in her life. Of course Donnan asks what is the other one:

"'V'en my first-born is laid in my arms.'
"For a while only the wind blew, loud in the trees." (14, p. 112)

This time the wind underlines what is important, loudly for emphasis. That wind gets everywhere. We can think of it as:

"...the wind at the edge of the world forever calling."
-see here.

It certainly blows between worlds. If enough works by Poul Anderson were to be filmed, then there could certainly be a compilation of scenes with wind punctuating dialogue and commenting on action in Ys, in Gothland and on other planets.

The Wind Of Spring

After Doomsday.

The male and female crews have met:

"We are together, the two halves of the human race. We know now that man will live; there will be children and hearthfires on another Earth - in the end on a thousand or a million other Earths." (14, p. 112)

A new beginning - a novel's length away from the end of Earth in the opening sentence. In a work by Poul Anderson, it is time for an appropriate wind to blow and, right on cue:

"When Sigrid stepped out, the wind blew odors of springtime at her." (ibid.)

It could have been autumn or winter when Sigrid agreed to meet Donnan on the planet Varg but of course it has to be spring. How many readers notice that the seasons match the cycles of the narrative like this? We are affected by reading Poul Anderson's texts whether or not we consciously reflect on them.